Knowing LOST

Shadows leapt across the beach, dancing in the flames of the still-burning fuselage. The crowd had dispersed, the survivors returning to their tents and preparing to sleep beside the strangely comforting firelight of the massive funeral pyre. The air was warm from the blaze, and a smoky smell pervaded throughout the camp, thickening the air. Every few moments, Ryan was able to catch a sharp scent of burnt hair. He would have retched from the thought of the burning corpses inside had he not been thinking of another, more prevalent corpse: his own.

Kevin a few feet away, facing him. Kevin’s eyes were directed up toward the starry skies, watching the plume of smoke rise from the burning plane and into the atmosphere. The fire was much more dim than it had been, though it was bright enough that Kevin and Ryan’s long shadows still flickered across the sand.

“How much time to do we have?” Kevin asked him suddenly, breaking the long silence between them. “You did the rewatch. When does Hurley make the manifest?”

Ryan answered almost immediately; he’d been working the same answer out in his mind before Kevin had even asked the question. “Episode ten,” he said quickly, glancing around. “‘Raised by Another.’”

Kevin nodded. “And we’re to what? ‘White Rabbit’?”

“Thereabouts,” Ryan replied. “But I don’t even know how long we’ve been on the Island. There’s no way to tell how much longer we have just by episode.”

Kevin kicked the sand, a volley of it landing just a few feet away from the fire. “Dammit. This is a real problem.”

Ryan nodded. “Once that manifest happens, we’re toast. As good as dead. What’s going to happen to Sawyer over Shannon’s inhaler will be nothing compared to what they do to us. We need to have a cover story.”

Kevin laughed, a short, bitter laugh that racked his lungs. “What cover story could we come up with? That we’re Others? Which one of us is going to be Jim LaFleur?”

Ryan scratched his face with desperation, a nervous habit. He was starting to grow a beard. “I don’t know what else we can do!” he cried with desperation, his voice rising.

“Shut up!” Kevin scolded, glancing around to make sure no one had heard. “The way I see it, there’s only one thing we can do.”

Ryan grinned halfheartedly. “I’ll do you if you do me, Kev-orkian,” he said, patting the gun he had in his pocket. The clip and the chamber round was in his other pocket; he was too afraid he would shoot his leg off to keep the gun loaded.

Kevin shook his head, wanting to laugh at the joke, but willing himself not to. This wasn’t the time or place for jokes. “We’re going to need to hide when that goes down,” he said finally.

Ryan looked at him with disbelief, taking a moment to respond. “What, in the jungle?”

Kevin shrugged, unsure. “Haven’t thought that out yet. Maybe.”

“I’m not going back into that damned jungle,” Ryan said harshly. “I’ll take my chances with these survivors over Man in Black any day of the week.”

“You’re paranoid!” Kevin scoffed. “He beat the hell out of me, and I’m not scared to go back in there.”

“You don’t understand,” Ryan said simply, and Kevin knew that he wasn’t going to make any further progress on the topic.

“I’ll find us somewhere to go. Some shelter.”

“You’ll find yourself some shelter,” Ryan replied quickly. “I’ll just stay here and tell them we’re stowaways.”

—-

The night soon faded into morning, a process which Kevin witnessed firsthand. There was too much going through his mind for him to sleep at all. A few feet away, in his tent, Ryan had managed to sleep at least some, though his eyes were just as dark as Kevin’s when he exited his tent the next morning.

“Finished my list,” Kevin said to Ryan. Ryan glanced over, his face filled with apathy.

“Great,” he said unenthusiastically, shrugging. “Good luck with solving all those mysteries.”

Kevin shrugged, standing up and stretching. The camp had begun to move with activity again, and an impatient Nikki brushed past him on her way to what had been deemed “the pantry” for breakfast.

“Oh, my God,” Kevin muttered to himself, staring after her as she walked.”She’s really been here the whole time.” In his few short days as a survivor, he’d interacted with very few of the background characters. There’d been the incidents with Frogurt and Arzt, sure, but seeing Nikki there — it was as though the universe was retconning itself to fit “Expose.” She wasn’t supposed to start existing until she imposed herself on that mission in early season three.

And then a realization struck so quickly that he reeled. It all made sense now. He had a place to go. He had a place to hide. It was perfect.

He turned on his heel back to face his tent, reaching to pick up his notebook. He flipped it over to the last page, opening it and brushing the specks of sand from the wide-ruled paper. There was the question he had posted to himself, written in a quick scrawl with a huge question mark: WHERE TO HIDE?

He gleefully reached into his pocket, pulling out a red pen — along with the black one, one of the only two he owned — and proceeded to circle the question mark, almost madly, creating a jagged, multilayered circle around the punctuation. This was his clue, and he didn’t need to forget it.

“Kevin?” His fervor was broken by a familiar voice. A pang of fear gripped him, and he slammed the notebook shut, looking over his shoulder to see Joanna standing there. A bit of color had returned to her face, and she was smiling at him. “Hey,” she said as he turned, giving a little wave. “What are you doing today?”

He shrugged. “Not much, I guess.”

“Well, I still don’t feel like I’ve repaid you for… I don’t know… keeping me alive?” She grinned. “So I was wondering if maybe you’d like to go on a picnic or something.”

He smiled back at her, but shook his head. “I’m really working on something right here, so not today. Maybe later.”

“You said you didn’t have much to do today,” she said, her grin shrinking.

“Well,” he said, realizing he’d been caught in his lie. “I’m just… Well… Look, I’m not up for it today.” His tone was false and they both knew it.

She stared at him, her grin completely gone. “Oh,” she said simply. She stared at him for a moment, unsure of whether to be disappointed or angry. Instead, she simply turned and walked away, not looking back at him.

She’s going to die anyway, he reasoned to himself, and immediately felt sick.

—-

Charlie’s face darkened as he saw Ryan approaching. “Aw, bloody hell,” he said to himself, standing up from his seated position in the sand and brushing himself off. “Bug off, Ryan!”

Ryan stopped a few feet away, hands in the air as if surrendering. “I just want to talk, Charlie,” he said softly. “I did you wrong, and I’m sorry, but you need to hear me out.”

“Not a chance,” Charlie sneered, turning to walk away. “You’ve said enough.”

“Then let me get someone else to say it,” Ryan replied desperately, his voice straining from emotion. “Come talk to Locke.”

Charlie turned back to him, and Ryan noticed that he looked much healthier than he had  the night before. He’d hit the heroin, and hard.

“You’re going to run out eventually,” Ryan said quietly, his voice still managing to carry to Charlie. “And when you do, I won’t be here to help you.”

Charlie turned and began to walk away. “I don’t need your help.”

—-

It was midday before he saw Ethan again. He hadn’t been looking for him; his worries had been focused on Charlie and the manifest. Ethan hadn’t crossed his mind since the night before until he saw him again that afternoon.

Ethan wasn’t doing much, it seemed, but ambling around the beach and looking around. To anyone else, it looked like perfectly innocent behavior — Ethan was just passing the time. But to Ryan… he knew what Ethan was doing. He was making a mental list of the survivors. He was doing recon for the Others.

He watched from afar, following Ethan’s gaze around the camp. Hurley, Locke, Jack, Kate, Kevin… Ethan cooly glanced over them all, though his blank expression betrayed nothing other than harmless curiosity. And then, his eyes fell on Claire, and Ryan saw something in his face.

It was a brief flash of some carnal emotion that he couldn’t think of a name for but simply knew. He was no Cal Lightman, but he knew exactly what he was seeing: Ethan’s intentions were no different than they had ever been. He meant to take Claire.

Ryan, without thinking, immediately began to jog toward Claire, continually glancing over at Ethan as he passed over the empty expanse of sand to the pregnant girl standing on the beach, looking out at the ocean. He skidded to a halt a few feet away. She turned to look at him, a little startled.

“Ryan,” she said quickly, turning her head in shock.

“Hey,” he said to her unsurely, glancing back over his shoulder. He made eye contact with Ethan for a moment, and felt chill bumps form up his spine. Then, just as apparently carelessly as Ethan had been looking around, he looked away. His facade was broken, though, and moments later he strode off toward what was presumably his tent.

“What’s… up?” Claire asked him, unsure whether he was actually listening to her. He turned back to face her. He was out of shape and thus slightly out of breath, and he exhaled loudly before clearing his throat, and looking up at her, eyes clear.

“Look,” he said, unsure of where to start. His insecurity was starting to combat his need for an excuse, so he spoke quickly before he could talk himself out of it. “I was wondering…” he said, choosing his words as quickly and carefully as he could. “…if you’d maybe… um… like to grab lunch?”

The words had slipped out despite his hasty filter, and he immediately regretted them. The only women he’d asked out in the past four years had been from his workplace, so first dates usually meant lunch at a nearby deli or something. Only one relationship had progressed past the deli stage, though, and he’d made a promise to himself to be more creative with his asking style. But there it was; it had just slipped out with no apparent thought. And there was Claire, looking at him incredulously. He could read her thoughts now: Lunch? On an Island? But he had needed some excuse, even if it was a really bad one, for running over there, even though that had been a stupid idea because it wasn’t like Ethan was going to kidnap her in broad dayli–

“Sure,” she said, grinning at him. He stared at her for a moment, his stream of thought interrupted. He couldn’t immediately process what she had just said.

“Really?” he asked her, sighing in disbelief.

“Yeah, no, I’d like that. I don’t know where exactly we’d ‘get lunch,’ on an Island,” she said, her voice growing playful, “but it’s the least I can do for the man who saved my life.”

He nodded, a smile breaking across his face without him even realizing it. “Well,” he said, again at a loss for words. “Tomorrow, then?”

She smiled. “I don’t know…” she said jokingly. “I’ve got an appointment…”

He shook his head in playful shock. “I can’t believe it.”

The two of them stood there for a while, unsure of where the conversation could go from there. There was a small awkward silence between them before Ryan decided to speak up.

“Sorry,” he said, referring to the silence. “But, um, by the way, I’ll have to know what to bring.”

“Seems to me,” Claire replied, “that there are two choices: boar and fruit.”

He laughed, immediately thinking of a plan that immediately made him feel morally repugnant. But it had worked before, he reasoned, so why shouldn’t he have the right to do it?

“What is your favorite food that you miss?” he asked quickly, jumping a bit as the surf finally reached his point of the beach. Claire chuckled.

“I don’t know,” she said. “What do you mean?”

“Well,” he replied, growing less confident with his plan. “There’s stuff that isn’t easily found on the Island…” He trailed off. He obviously wasn’t as adept at this game as Charlie had been.

“Peanut butter,” she said suddenly, her eyes growing dreamy. “I really miss peanut butter.”

It had worked; she had bitten. “Peanut butter, eh?” he asked. “Crunchy or creamy?”

“Creamy,” she replied, cocking her head. “But what’s it matter? There’s no peanut butter for miles!”

He grinned. “I’ll get you some peanut butter for tomorrow,” he said mysteriously, and walked away. She stared after him, smiling and intrigued.

—-

“Kevin,” came a familiar voice, and he opened his eyes to see Jack standing in front of him, blocking the sunlight from hitting his face. The sun’s rays had a sort of halo effect around Jack’s still-short hair, and Kevin had to blink several times before realizing he still wasn’t dreaming.

“Jack,” he said in reply, sitting up. He’d dozed off just outside his tent, and was now covered in millions of itching sand granules. “What’s up?”

Jack took a sidestep, revealing Kate standing behind him. The sun flooded Kevin’s vision. Kate had a halo too, but a much brighter one.

“We’re going to be heading back to the caves to check things out,” Jack said. “Since you helped me find them, I figured I’d ask if you wanted to come along, too.”

“Sure,” Kevin replied. “I need plans today anyway.”

—-

They set off fifteen minutes later, without telling anyone where they were going. If anyone had noticed their absence, they didn’t say so. Ryan hadn’t even noticed Kevin was gone until Jin attacked Michael.

The beach erupted into chaos within seconds, with Jin slinging his fists at the confused and frightened Michael.

“Stop! Hey, stop!” Walt yelled, trying to push Jin, but Jin pushed back, knocking Walt down. “Get off of him, please! Stop! Stop!”

Ryan leapt into action, running forward toward the fight. A hand grabbed his arm, and he turned to see Sayid standing beside him. “Is that the wisest idea?” Sayid asked rhetorically, but Ryan shook his head.

“I know what this is about. Just help me get them separated.”

Jin was trying to drown Michael when Ryan and Sayid reached them, Sayid tackled Jin into the surf, and Ryan pulled Michael away to safety.

“What the hell, man?” Michael said as soon as he could catch his breath. “What was that crazy son of a bitch doing that for?”

“The handcuffs from the sky marshal,” Sayid said, “Now.” Sawyer immediately approached, holding out the cuffs.

“No,” Ryan argued, holding out his arm to bar Sawyer’s path. “You won’t need those.”

“And why the hell not, Gandhi?” Sawyer growled, his outstretched arm sinking a bit. “Miyagi there attacked for no reason.”

Ryan turned to face him. “Listen,” he said. “Just because you can’t understand him doesn’t mean that there was no provokation.”

“I didn’t do nothing, man, I promise!” Michael said, his battered face contorting with anger.

“Look,” Ryan replied. “I didn’t say you meant to do it. But I know a little bit of Korean. Not enough to talk, but I know some simple vocab words.” Lies were coming more easily to him now.

“So what was he saying?” Sawyer replied sardonically. “‘Kill, kill, kill?’”

“He was saying something about a watch,” Ryan lied. “He wanted a watch back.”

“What?” Michael said, holding up his wrist to show the watch hanging there. “This thing? Why does the watch matter?” Jin’s eyes narrowed as the watch’s face glinted in the sunlight.

“Look,” Ryan said, “They attach some sort of honor thing to possessions. Maybe it’s a family heirloom, I don’t know. But it obviously means a lot to him.”

“Enough to kill a guy?” Sawyer asked in disbelief. “Damn. Looks to me like something I saw on sale at a Macy’s one time.”

“You’ve been in a Macy’s?” Shannon asked from the surrounding crowd. Sawyer shot her a look.

“Fine, man, fine,” Michael said, standing up. Sand was caked to his forehead from the ocean, and a bruise was already starting to form over his left cheek. Reaching down to his wrist, Michael fumbled with the clasp of the watch and took it off, slapping it onto the still-restrained Jin’s chest. Sayid relented, and Jin clutched at the watch immediately. “Mine broke, and I found this in the wreckage,” Michael explained. “And I figured, hey, why let a $20,000 watch go to waste, which is ridiculous since time doesn’t matter on a damn island!”

He turned to walk away from the scene, but turned back to face Jin for just a moment. “Stay away from me. And my kid.”

Jin’s expression was hard to place, but there seemed to be a bit of penitence to him. Ryan glanced over to Sun, whose expression bore nothing but confusion as she stared at him and wondered how exactly he’d know what Jin had wanted, considering Jin hadn’t uttered a word.

—–

They had reached the caves in an hour, unaware of the drama going on at the beach. The waterfall was still trickling nearby, and Kate immediately branched off from the group to fill her backpack full of empty water bottles.

Kevin continued on to the caves with Jack, at his behest. “I want you to have a say in this, Kevin,” Jack said. “No matter what you say, you did help me find these caves.”

They had looked at about three caves when the undergrowth beside them began to rustle. Locke emerged from the jungle, holding his knife and looking around suspiciously. As soon as he saw Kevin and Jack, he holstered his knife and regained his composure. The other two simply stared at him.

“I was hunting,” he said as explanation. “Followed the trail you guys left.”

Jack nodded and returned to his exploration of the caves. Kevin, however, was fixated by a knowing stare from Locke, as though Locke could see right through him. Then Locke’s gaze was gone and he was staring into the cave after Jack.

“What the hell?” Jack asked suddenly, and Kevin immediately realized what he was seeing. “Hey, Kate?” he asked, calling behind him. “Maybe you should take a look at this. Kevin, you too.”

Kevin stepped into the cave to see Jack and Locke crouching over the two skeletons. Adam and Eve. Man in Black and Mother. Kate entered the cave and gasped. “Who are they? How did they get here?”

“I can’t exactly perform an autopsy, but there doesn’t seem to be any major trauma to the bones. Someone laid them to rest here.”

Kevin frowned, seeing his dissatisfaction of “Across the Sea” manifesting itself in the form of these skeletons.

“That’s odd,” he murmured to himself, but Locke heard.

“What’s odd?” he asked, turning to look at him with his piercing gaze.

“Well, it’s just that…” Kevin said, leaning forward, “… you’d think they’d have some trauma or something.”

“No, it just seems like they simply died,” Jack said, Kevin leaned forward to the nearest skeleton even more closely. He’d seen the Man in Black’s neck break when he was thrown into the source by Jacob, but this skeleton’s next wasn’t broken at all. It was, in fact, perfectly intact.

“Any idea how long they’ve been here?” Kate asked.

“Long. It takes forty or fifty years for clothing to degrade like this,” Jack replied, holding up a sleeve from one of the skeletons.

“Forty or fifty years?” Kevin asked. “The skeletons look like they’ve been around for much longer than that.”

Jack shrugged. “Given that they’re in sort of a sheltered area, that’s all give or take. They could be much, much older than that.”

Kevin nodded. At least that wasn’t necessarily a continuity error. Sure, the skeleton’s neck wasn’t broken, but maybe Jack’s forty or fifty years statement had just been a wild guess.

—-

A few minutes later, Jack approached Kevin. The two had left the skeleton cave, and were walking around what would soon become the sort of community area of the caves.

“This would be a good place to live,” Jack said, to Kevin. “We could build a dam around that spring so everybody could have fresh water and we could get the infirmary off the beach. You think it’s a bad idea?”

“Not at all,” Kevin agreed. “Makes sense to me.”

“Good,” Jack said. “There’s going to be a lot of convincing to do, but I think we should see what happens. I think we could really start moving in tonight, if we convince the right people.”

“That’s cool,” said Kevin absently, “But I’m not really up for another jungle trek. I’m gonna stick around here and just chill until you get back.”

Jack frowned. “I’m not sure that’s safe, with the monster and everything.”

“Can’t be any worse than going through the jungle,” Kevin countered. “And besides, I’ve got plenty of natural shelter around here. I’ve survived the monster once already — with these caves, I can do it again.”

Jack nodded after a moment of deliberation, and then shrugged. “It’s up to you, man. We’ll be back in a couple hours, alright?”

Kevin nodded. “I’ll be here.”

—-

He stayed on the beach with Claire. She had decided independently of him, of course. She still had hope that the signal fire that Sayid was stoking would still work. He knew that it wouldn’t of course, but he didn’t want to go back into the jungle. Not with the monster who was probably lurking, waiting for him. The monster hadn’t made a sound since he’d gone hunting with Locke, and he had the feeling that it was watching him. Waiting.

Kate stayed at the beach, too, much to Jack’s chagrin. In the end, only a few accompanied him back to the caves. As they departed into the jungle, Ryan stared deep into the flames of the signal fire and realized with despair that he was going to be on that Island for a very, very long time.

—-

Kevin wasn’t at the caves when Jack returned. There was absolutely no trace of him, and even after a quick once-over of all the caves, Jack came back with nothing.

“I told him it wasn’t safe,” he muttered to himself, staring around in a circle. Hurley, standing nearby, shrugged.

“Maybe he went back to the beach a different way than we did,” he said, his face betraying a bit of worry but a greater desire to just relax. It had been a long walk. “I wouldn’t worry about it, dude. He’s probably at the beach camp wondering the same thing about us.”

Jack, eventually, agreed that was probably the case, but it was too late to return to the beach to check. The jungle was dark, and the cave was only kept visible by their torches.

Kevin, already miles away, had a torch of his own. He’d pocketed a flashlight before the trip, and as soon as Jack, Kate, and Locke were out of sight, he’d immediately set off into the jungle.

He’d gotten his bearings from the trip up the mountain, so he had a rough idea of the direction he was going. He had carefully kept in mind his position in relation to the beach, so while a compass was useless, his intuition had some worth.

Darkness had fallen about two hours later, and he was forced to start using the flashlight when it grew too dark to see. It had been another half hour before the flashlight dimmed. The batteries were dying, and he realized with a sick feeling that he had a good chance of being trapped, out in the jungle, in the dark.

It only took him a few minutes more of searching. His bearings had obviously been good, because he had begun to have his doubts about his intuition when he’d stumbled into the clearing. Even then, it had taken him a moment to realize that the clearing was the one he’d been searching for. It was fate, he decided later. Irony or fate.

He could see through the moonlight the shadow of the Beechcraft on the cliff above him, and his eyes followed it downward to the small glimmer of the metal hatch in the ground.

It was the Pearl. He’d found his shelter.